Commissioned by Matti Hyökki and the YL Helsinki Male Voice Choir, Lamentation uses extracts from one of six laments by Peter Abelard (1079 – 1142) which were found in a manuscript that was only discovered in 1830 in the Vatican.

Helen Waddell, in the accompanying notes to her translation of the text, suggests that in this searing meditation on one of the most controversial and multi-faceted Biblical passages (II Samuel 1:17-27), ‘Abelard’s passion, that never escaped in his strange, remote letters to Heloise, for once awakes and cries’.

Although written with particular reference to David, slayer of Goliath, and Jonathan, son of King Saul, it is the ecumenical sentiment of loss felt by persons of any faith or none that pervades Abelard’s beautiful Latin text and, indeed, my rendering of his words.